Texas death row inmate’s mental health questioned

The Associated Press

Published
6:31 pm CDT, Sunday, May 13, 2012

This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, shows Texas death row inmate Steven Staley. The outcome of legal wrangling about Staleyís mental health is likely to determine if the former laborer from Denver is put to death this week in Texas for a slaying almost 25 years ago in Fort Worth. less

This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, shows Texas death row inmate Steven Staley. The outcome of legal wrangling about Staleyís mental health is likely to determine if ... more

Photo: HOPD

Photo: HOPD

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, shows Texas death row inmate Steven Staley. The outcome of legal wrangling about Staleyís mental health is likely to determine if the former laborer from Denver is put to death this week in Texas for a slaying almost 25 years ago in Fort Worth. less

This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, shows Texas death row inmate Steven Staley. The outcome of legal wrangling about Staleyís mental health is likely to determine if ... more

Photo: HOPD

Texas death row inmate’s mental health questioned

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

HUNTSVILLE — The outcome of legal wrangling about condemned killer Steven Staley’s mental health is likely to determine if the former laborer is put to death this week in Texas for a slaying almost a quarter-century ago in Fort Worth.

Staley, 49, faces lethal injection Wednesday evening for the fatal shooting of a Steak and Ale restaurant manager who was taken hostage during a botched robbery in October 1989. The arrest of Staley and two accomplices after a wild 20-mile car and foot chase ended a series of robberies, assaults and at least one other killing as the trio wreaked havoc in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

In a written statement, Staley implicated himself in the slaying of 35-year-old Bob Read. And since he arrived on death row in 1991, his mental competence became an issue as his punishment neared.

Prosecutors say he’s legally competent, and state District Court Judge Wayne Salvant has ordered him to be medicated, by force if needed.

“If he was found not to be competent, the trial judge would just withdraw the (execution) date,” said Jim Gibson, an assistant district attorney in Tarrant County, where Staley was tried and convicted.

Staley also has been examined by psychologists, who determined the prisoner was competent.

“The state has given him enough psychotropic drugs that the judge found he met the definition to be competent to be executed,” said Stickels, “The whole reason he’s been medicated is to make him competent to be executed.”

Staley’s previous attorney called him “too nuts to be executed” when the courts stopped a scheduled execution in 2005. And Stickles said Staley’s severe mental illness has existed for several years and has been exacerbated by the forced drug regimen Stickles argues was illegally ordered by Salvant.

If lower courts refuse to stay the execution, Stickles said he’ll take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which he said has not addressed the question of involuntary medication for the purposes of execution. When administered, the drugs leave Staley “with extreme sedation and zombie-like effects,” Stickles said in an appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Salvant, in his order, pointed to a 2003 ruling from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said forcible medication is appropriate if it’s likely to make the condemned inmate competent, if the side effects wouldn’t be worse than the benefits and if it’s in the prisoner’s best medical interests.

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court said it is unconstitutional to execute someone who is insane. The justices didn’t define insanity, but did say a person may be executed if he’s aware of the punishment and the reason for it. Then in 2002, the court barred execution of mentally impaired people.